Industrial upgrading eases Dongguan labor woes

A push for industrial upgrading has led to an increase in automated production lines in Dongguan, one of the world’s leading factory zones, in South China’s Guangdong Province, helping to address persistent labor shortages.

Manufacturers in the city, a key manufacturing center whose products account for 0.95 percent of China’s GDP each year, said machines and robots are helping them address labor shortages as China’s population ages and wages rise.

Even as some companies in labor- intensive sectors have increased difficulty in hiring staff, many have avoided this problem by moving toward the higher end of the industry and value chains.

As production resumed in China, a post in November on social media stating that companies in Dongguan are finding it difficult to fill job vacancies with a salary of 7,000 yuan ($ 1,071) per month, far exceeding the national average of around 4,500 yuan, grabbed many views on social media platforms.

The labor shortage is also structural – young rural migrant workers are less inclined to accept production line jobs than their predecessors, considering such jobs to be beneath them.

However, entrepreneurs in Dongguan said the push to automate has helped.

Chen Liang, general manager of Dongguan Jinconn New Material Holdings Co, a private company that makes magnetic materials, said his plant employs only 120 workers to do what 300 would have to do without automation.

Dongguan, the world’s factory for furniture, smartphones, textiles and paper, has about 5 million rural migrant workers on its production lines.

Liu Fengzhen, an executive of De Rucci Healthy Sleep Co, a mattress and bed linen maker based in Dongguan, said labor productivity has risen 22 percent per worker since the company introduced Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing equipment in 2017.

“Previously, each of our workers could produce five mattresses a day. Now, it’s six, thanks to automation,” Liu said.

Inside the factory of Maisto, a world- leading maker of auto models that exports car models to 146 countries and regions, automatic mini transport robots could be seen carrying parts among different production lines.

Factory manager John Ng told the Global Times that the company has applied many such robots to address labor shortages and increase efficiency.

Maisto once employed 12,000 workers.

But with the drive toward automation in recent years, the figure has been cut to about 2,000.